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The-Hunger-Games-Meets-The-Bachelor TV pilot THE SELECTION

April 13, 2012 TV Pilots

If TV pilot The Selection is The Hunger Games meets The Bachelor, as described by TV Guide, does that mean that The Selection bachelorettes will fight each other to the death? Aimee Teegarden (Friday Night Lights) stars as a poor girl chosen by lottery to enter a fierce competition to marry the Prince and become the next Queen of a war-torn nation far in the future. I didn’t see Amy Teegarden as America Singer, William Mosely as servant Aspen or Ethan Peck as Prince Maxim on set, but did visit all of their shooting locations. And eventually managed to photograh Pieta Sergeant below as rebel leader Gaia.

On the first day of filming, The Selection set up a village market inside the Terminal City Ironworks complex in east Vancouver with Aimee Teegarden on set as young America Singer. I dropped by too early to see the market scene, catching a glimpse through an open gate of prop wagons and stalls still covered in plastic.

Scenes of America saying goodbye to her village were shot over three days at the Britannia Heritage Shipyards in Steveston, captured beautifully by commercial photographer Clayton Perry in his The Selection photoset on Flickr. In Perry’s photos you can see villager extras holding up hand-lettered signs on cardboard reading: Queen America, We Love You America, Make us Proud, America Our Next Queen. William Mosley’s Aspen was also on set but when I dropped by the filming was behind one of the xxx.

To depict the war-torn country, The Selection went north on the Sea to Sky highway to the Squamish Municipal Airport for scenes of fighting with Royal forces on an airport runway. I zoomed in but couldn’t pick out Peta Sergeant on set as the rebel leader fighting the Head of the Military.

Scenes from the royal palace must have been filmed at Hycroft, the University Women’s Club in Shaughnessy,

YVRSHOOTS Series – ARROW and Seven Other TV Pilots Await Their Fate

April 11, 2012 Arrow, Cult, Emily Owens M.D., Red Widow, TV Pilots, YVRSHOOTS Series

Published April 11, 2012 on Vancouver is Awesome

In mid-May, the five American broadcast networks start to unveil their fall plans in New York and we will know if Arrow, Midnight Sun and six other TV pilots we saw filming in the Vancouver area before the Easter weekend will make it to series for next season. Add one more pilot to film later this year for a total of nine and Vancouver ranks second in production of drama pilots, behind New York’s eleven and ahead of Los Angeles’s eight. Why is our city so popular for American dramas? (SEE UPDATE BELOW)

Well, Vancouver is beautiful, can look like anywhere-U.S.A., has great crews who are cheaper than U.S. ones and shares the same time zone as L.A., where the showrunners and their bosses live. Not to mention that one of the five pilots shot here last year became a surprise big hit — modern fairy tale series Once Upon a Time. Still, nothing is guaranteed with 41 drama series pilots vying for a limited number of primetime slots.

Of the five The CW drama pilots in town last month, two are considered hot prospects: pilot Arrow (based on DC Comics The Green Arrow) and The-Hunger Games-Meets-The-Bachelor pilot The Selection. By all accounts, Stephen Amell is the Green Arrow in this more Jason Bourne-like and less Smallville-ish production based on the old Smallville lot near the Skytrain. Like The Dark Knight’s re-imagined Batman, Arrow’s vigilante superhero fights crime with martial arts and technology plus the special skill of archery.

I saw Stephen Amell in Gastown in late March in character as his secret identity Oliver Queen with Katie Cassidy as his former love Dinah “Laurel” Lance. And in mid-March, I spied Amell in the downtown eastside during a west coast windstorm with Colin Donnell as his best friend and trustafarian Tommy Merlyn, who drives one-heck-of-a-ride, the Mercedes 2012 SLS AMG (two wings and a cockpit).